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Snow Trains
While an aqueduct might be preferable, trains are available now | |
In recent days/weeks the US national news is engrossed with
vast amounts of snow falling on the north-east section of the
country. Meanwhile, the western part of the country is
suffering from severe drought. So, the proposal is to load as
much snow as possible into railroad cars, and transport
them to
various Western reservoirs that need filling.
While an aqueduct system might be better, it has a problem
with not working very well when the water is frozen and
accumulating mountainously. And it simply doesn't exist, in
terms of East-to-West conveyance. Meanwhile, trains do exist
and can transport solid water in significant quantities. We just
have to decide if the cost of shipping that water is worth it,
both in terms of reducing flooding in the East when the
temperature finally rises, and in increasing reservoir levels out
West.
Feb 4 addenda: see a couple annotations I added.
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[+]Naturally the donor cities would be those that don't have to worry about their own water table levels. |
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Fallen snow is about 1/6 as dense as water... packed say 1/2 ? So just fill up a 250m3 boxcar with a 100t load limit, and yer off to the races. |
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// I'm not seeing much difference between solid or liquid water // |
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You need new spectacles, then. |
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Snow can be shifted in hopper freight cars. Liquid requires tankers or
a pipeline. |
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There is something in this idea. Many cities truck the snow away
anyway. If it can be loaded into railcars hauled by electric traction,
that would make sense. |
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Hmm, snow is a pain to move about compared to water. But
at least it's stable in large open containers. Somewhere
during transit though, it would melt. Then you have large
open containers partially filled with water. You're then
going to get waves and all sorts of nasty oscillations in
them. You don't need very much water sloshing about
before you can tip over a train, or ferry (see Zeebrugge
ferry disaster). Now, liquid handling tankers are super
baked, but getting snow into the little holes isn't easy. |
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Insulated cars would solve that problem, what would the cost of desalination from the road salt be though? |
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// Somewhere during transit though, it would melt // |
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A freight train can run at 60km/h (some go much faster) for very
long distances. |
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It's 2500 km between Chicago and Las Vegas. |
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That's 42 hours. For half the time it will be night, so no solar
input. So, 21 hours, and the first 30% will be in a region where
air temperatures are very low. |
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How much is your trainload of bulk snow going to melt in 14
hours ? |
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[2 fries] We seldom see much of the white stuff on our roads here in LotusLand so help me out here, please. Don't they lay down the salt AFTER they plow the snow off the streets? |
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[8th] I would think you'd prefer the snow to be melted by the time the train reaches its destination. Which is easier to unload, water or snow? |
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As for the idea, wouldn't there be a higher yield if we were to pack ice onto these trains rather than snow? Ice is denser than snow and it would take longer to melt. I guess the costs of procurement, handling & loading would be higher, though. |
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Packing it when loading would significantly increase the density,
but make it harder to unload. |
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Bottom-opening hopper wagons would be better for unloading
snow; tipper wagons for ice. |
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I've been saying for years if they're worried about the
Antarctic melting they should mine the glaciers for water. |
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As something of a compromise, we might imagine an
aqueduct that only partly reaches from some Western
reservoir toward the East (it might actually be a dry river
bed). Trains could dump their melting snow there, sooner
than travelling all the way to the actual reservoir. |
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*placeholder. please ignore this comment until removed* |
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Reminder to self to do the math: |
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Bulk cargo transport cost by rail.
Cost of building a pipeline.
Cost of desalination.
Cost of melting snow.
Cost of compacting snow. |
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^ Well, you can cross out "compacting snow": just jump up and down on it: bear in mind that a standard boxcar can take 100 tons or so, so you don't have to compact it into solid ice to fit. Also "melting snow": throw some white paint onto the cars and a few days won't make any difference. |
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//Don't they lay down the salt AFTER they plow
the snow off the streets?// |
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After, before, during, instead of. |
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Basically the streets in the north east are white
from the first hint of snow in the fall until the first
real rainstorm after the last snow in the spring,
and it's not from the snow. Most areas start
spreading salt in advance to keep the roads from
getting nasty. |
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// Bulk cargo transport cost by rail. // |
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Low. Ship is even cheaper. |
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// Cost of building a pipeline. // |
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Very high. Plus ongoing maintainance, pumping costs, etc. |
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// Cost of desalination. // |
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High to very high, depending on energy source. |
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// Cost of melting snow. // |
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// Cost of compacting snow // |
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Shirley, you'd just want to dump it in oen of the high lakes in
Colorado, preferably one that drains west. Melting takes
care of itself, and you can deal with the water in the
normal water course management ways. Not sure what the
cost of lifting snow 14,000ft would be. |
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Don't dump it in a lake, dump it next to the lake.
That way it doesn't melt until summer when they
really need it. So basically you'd just be increasing
the snow pack on the west slopes of the rocky
mountains. |
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Now, to figure out what to do about that salt... |
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Actually, what happens to all the salt they use on
the roads? I assume most of it ends up in the rivers
and lakes anyway before flowing to the ocean. If
the concentration in the rivers there isn't enough
to matter, then it shouldn't matter if we dump the
salty snow in the west coast river instead, except
that the California environmentalists will probably
object. |
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Dump your unwanted snow in the Hoover dam. |
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//Dump your unwanted snow in the Hoover dam// |
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is this is an elaborate way of making the train a hybrid? No,
it's diesel-electric snow removing pumped storage with
phase change cooling. |
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Actually, don't dump it there, dump it at the source 20-30
miles north west of Denver CO. |
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// Actually, what happens to all the salt they use on
the roads? I assume most of it ends up in the rivers and
lakes anyway before flowing to the ocean. If the
concentration in the rivers there isn't enough to matter,
then it shouldn't matter if we dump the salty snow in the
west coast river instead, except that the California
environmentalists will probably object.// |
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In environmentally sensitive areas (wetlands and drinking
water feeds), they've started reducing salt use. In other,
borderline, areas, they've started using other salts that
have less impact (more MgCl2 instead of NaCl, or organic
salts). Practically speaking, however, the total area that
is salted is only a small percentage of the total snowfall,
so the concentration is fairly low. |
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In this scheme, however, the stuff that is salted is also
the stuff that has the highest priority to be removed,
roads and sidewalks. As a result, you'd get a
disproportionate amount of the salted snow. |
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What might work, although it would require
municipalities to stop plowing at least some areas during
the storm, would be to let the snow accumulate on the
road, then come through with a harvester that leaves the
bottom 4-6 inches intact before the plows come through. |
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If you use calcium carbonate as your ice melter, you can
then bubble the train exhaust through it and you'll end up
with a bicarbonate solution. You've captured the train
carbon, and melted more of the snow. |
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You folks may be missing something. If the goal is
specifically to take snow from some buried city and
move it elsewhere, that needs fresh water, the logistics
of the snow-removal can employ scrapers and
equivalent that work on the top parts of the snow, and
don't scrape the ground where the salt is. So, only
fairly pure solid water would be gathered up for
shipping. |
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Based on the news, we could be talking about scraping
off more than a foot at a time. |
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Then the city snow-clearance equipment would make a
2nd pass along the roads, getting the close-to-the-
ground layer of snow. the few inches that were not
scraped on the 1st pass, but has all the sand and salt
and other stuff associated with it. |
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What happens to this scheme if it's the wrong kind of
snow? |
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All the trains stop running.* |
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Please, do try to keep up. (Although that may be difficult if you
choose to travel by train). |
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*This witticism is completely incomprehensible to any reader
who is not British and/or less than 30 years old. |
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psst [Vernon], [MechE] said that two annos above yours. |
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